the following curious
incident in my long career.

I mention this circumstance as a curiosity only so far as the incident
is concerned, but as more than a curiosity so far as the legality of
evading the substance of the law by a technicality is concerned.

All men are not privileged to cross-examine royalty, and especially
future emperors.

On July 1, 1847, which was not very long after my call to the Bar,
Prince Louis Napoleon, who afterwards became Emperor of the French,
was residing in England.

Of course, in looking back upon a man who afterwards became an
Emperor, the proportions seem to have altered, and he looks greater
than his figure actually was. He is more important in one's eyes, and
therefore from this point of view the event seems to be of greater
magnitude than the mere police-court business that it was. When a man
becomes great, the smallest details of his career increase in value
and importance.

The Prince had given a man of the name of Charles Pollard into custody
for stealing and obtaining by fraud two bills of exchange for L1,000
each.

I was instructed by one Saul (not of Tarsus) to defend, and old Saul
thought it would be judicious to cross-examine the Prince into a
cocked hat, little dreaming what kind of a cocked hat our opponent
would one day wear.

But Saul, not content with this ordinary drum-beating kind of Old
Bailey performance, in which there is much more alarm than harm,
instructed me to make a few inquiries as to the Prince's private life,
and so _show him up_ in public. Saul loved that kind of persecution.
To him the witness-box was a pillory, notwithstanding there was
more mud attaching to the throwers than to the mere object of their
attention.

Young as I was in my profession, I had sense enough to know that to
dip into a prosecutor's private history, and the history of his father
and grandfather, and a succession of grandmothers and aunts, was
hardly the way to show that the prisoner had not stolen that
gentleman's property, but was a good way to prevent the Prince from
recommending him to mercy.

I therefore, in my simplicity, asked old Saul what the uncle of the
Prince and his voyage in the _Bellerophon_, etc., had to do with this
man's stealing these two bills of exchange.

"Never mind, Mr. Hawkins, you do it; it has a great deal to do with
it."

However, I made up my own mind as to the course I should pursue, and
having carefully read my "instructions," found t